An incumbent political party, who cares only about voters' welfare, faces future political competition from a similarly well-intentioned party whose beliefs about the consequences of a `long-run' public policy are different from its own. We show that when the incumbent can endogenously influence...

The global climate is changing, and will continue to do so even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically curbed. Economies are therefore faced with the challenge of adapting to climate change. This challenge is particularly important in developing countries, which, due to a combination of...

Economic evaluation of climate policy traditionally treats uncertainty by appealing to expected utility theory. Yet our knowledge of the impacts of climate policy may not be of sufficient quality to justify probabilistic beliefs. In such circumstances, it has been argued that the axioms of...

Intertemporal conflicts occur when a group of agents with heterogeneous time preferences must make a collective decision about how to manage a common asset. How should this be done? We examine two methods � an `Economics� approach that seeks to implement efficient allocations, and a...

Uncertainty is intrinsic to climate change: we know that the climate is changing, but not precisely how fast or in what ways. Nor do we understand fully the social and economic consequences of these changes, or the options that will be available for reducing climate change. Furthermore the...

A group of time consistent agents has access to a common productive resource stock whose output provides their consumption needs. The agents disagree about the appropriate pure rate of time preference to use when choosing a consumption policy, and thus delegate the management of the resource to...